Why Isn’t Audio Involved From The Start?

There are many questions that burn inside of audio designers. You can hear us wailing and gnashing our teeth. Why didn’t I check the expiration date on that bologna? Why did I continue eating it after realizing that it had gone bad? Why isn’t audio involved from the beginning?

I’d like to address that last one. It’s the easiest one to answer of the bunch, really. The first two, those are the tough ones. No need to stir up controversy with those first two.

I should mention that I don’t have scientific evidence to answer this question from an analysis of hard data. But I have observed some stuff over the years. Also, I can say that I work at a place where audio developers are involved from the beginning, or, we are at least invited and encouraged to be involved from the beginning. It didn’t come without some effort on everyone’s part.

I think the first step towards figuring out why audio isn’t involved from the start is to ask ourselves why other people wouldn’t want to involve us. We have to be honest with ourselves when we ask this question. And we need to be fair to people who we may not understand.

It’s easy to point fingers at others. Some people don’t see past the audio label to see the whole human being with an entire life of experiences. Some see us coming in at the end of a project and can’t fathom how we’d function at the beginning. And there are some who just couldn’t give two craps about audio at all.

Bad news time, though. All of that stuff points right back to us. And we’re not going to make any progress until we can acknowledge that this is our responsibility. The issues above that seem like they’re about other people are really about us.

The easy part is explaining how we can contribute audio early on. We can talk to our colleagues and the leaders of our companies about ideas we have for early phases of development. Things like providing music for the team to work to that fits the style of the game, or placing evocative music to key pieces of concept art, or creating prototypes of new audio systems, or filling test levels with sound and music, or recording temporary voice for mission prototypes, and so on forever and ever for as long as we’re willing to experiment. We know this, and we need everyone else to know it, too.

Showing is better than talking, though. We can’t just talk. We can’t expect other disciplines to provide us with a bunch of work so early in the project. We don’t need them to, either. That’s exactly the perception that we’re fighting. We need to stand on our own two feet and show how we can add to the project from the very start. We dig for information and then we start doing stuff.

We need to have skills outside of audio. Often the absolute beginning of a project brings a scarcity of support. We can’t always expect lots of help in proving out our ideas. We need the ability to do it ourselves, which might involve level design, gameplay scripting, interactive fiction, interpretive dance, woodworking, honestly whatever tools we can use to express our ideas without needing other peoples’ time. Self sufficiency can mean the difference between being involved or not, since it’s just one person being added early on and not a more costly cadre of people.

We need to show results quickly, too. Things change quickly early in the project. Things can become irrelevant over the course of 48 hours as the teams explore possibilities. If we’re going to keep the pace, we need to be adept at quick sound design that gets the point across.

We also have to prepare to waste a bunch of work. Wasted work is a pretty dreaded thing during production and post-production. It’s going to happen in the early phases. Like, a lot. And that’s okay. Most of what everyone else is doing is going in the dustbin, too. Work in parallel with artists and designers and don’t wait for their stuff to be final. If timing or some other variable changes and it’s worth fixing the sound, then you’ll fix the sound.

I realize that sometimes we are understaffed in audio personnel. We’re already sweaty and overworked and in desperate need of some family time, and it can seem impossible to find time to involve ourselves in another project this early when we already have our hands full. But let me just suggest that one unexpected, meaningful contribution early in the project can be all it takes to convince the team that they need us. This might be good justification to hire.

My soapbox is caving in. There’s more to say but you’ve probably already finished your morning coffee and are ready to move on. If you have any other ideas or anything to say on the matter, I’d love to hear from you. You can leave a comment or contact me directly.

About the Author

What is there to say about Ariel that hasn't already been said? A lot, actually. He's not a household name. Well, that's not entirely true. He's a household name in his own household, I'd think. If he's not, then that's a little pathetic, isn't it? But I'm sure he is. I'm sure he is.

15 Comments

Great article Ariel! I think another positive outcome of getting involved early, is strengthening relationships with other team members/developers/disciplines. This is hard to do when everyone is going full steam towards the end of production. But I’ve found by spending that time in smaller groups working on prototypes/spikes/etc. you create stronger connections with those people that can help everyone communicate better and spend more energy on delivering awesome content for players when the workload gets a bit more hectic.

Thanks, Adam. You’re right, totally agree. Building rapport is huge, and communication is the thing. It’s an investment that can be made up front that will be immeasurably valuable later on.

Your comment reminds me that I should get back to the other article I was writing about why I think it’s important to know, understand, and ultimately care about the people we work with. Thanks for the unintentional reminder.

I like the idea that we can communicate not only by talking but by providing examples using audio demo’s, temp stuff in-engine, build a max patch, use hand puppets or just get up and use a friggin’ white board.

Agreed — puppet show would be great. The underlying point is that there is a whole world of media that allow us to express ourselves. Just because our expertise may be in audio shouldn’t limit how we express ourselves. Sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zone. Better yet, expand our comfort zone to include more stuff.

Because it costs money to employ people who don’t have anything to do.

Audio happens to be a task that naturally belongs to “post-production” (as in, it always comes last). Early production stages would be useful for e.g. recording and recording trips, but other than that, I don’t know really, because one will always hit the wall of not having the game art, script, audio hooks or whatever to know what to do with audio.

To put it more simply, producing audio prior to when its effective time is is simply ineffective and uneconomical (and that is regardless of what an audio person thinks about it). In indie teams it may be feasible for just the fun of it, but in commercial game development, I don’t really think so.

But as a solution, I’d suggest trying to make yourself useful in some other way (in in-house positions that way may usually be about working on the audio of another title, which is on the finishing stage, while a newer title is in early development).

I like that you suggest making yourself useful in some other way. I might express it a little wider and suggest putting on a different hat entirely. Get that design hat on and start designing the game.

But I’d also say that audio already has an infinite amount of work to do during the early phases. It’s the time to develop strategies. It’s the time to fix broken workflows. To create relationships with other disciplines. To educate others on why we do what we do and how we do it, and to learn why other disciplines do what they do and how they do it. To immerse yourself in your tools and make them more efficient. To talk about why your player cares about audio, to experiment, to figure out ways to get objective data from something that seems largely subjective.

If the only thing that an audio designer can contribute is post production sound design, if they have no other value to offer aside from that, if they are truly so bereft of life experience that they cannot contribute meaningfully during all phases of the project, then they had better lay low and hope nobody notices. There are too many brilliant and talented audio designers out there that will be gunning for their jobs. Just a matter of time.

I think making oneself useful in some other way (given that there’s time for it) is imperative at least in non-indie commercial game development, if one wants to stand any chance in being involved in development phases when there’s no active/effective/purposeful audio work to be done. However, it could be also imperative in certain game development or company cultures (e.g. everyone is working on the same creative project, thus everyone is interested in cross-discipline helping and brainstorming around in all ways that they possibly can and are willing to. I’m thinking on something like Valve here, you may have heard of their company structure and how they operate).

But when money and pressure is involved, the employer and other people paying for running the business tend to want to pay for people that are best suited for a given role and have them focus only on getting that role sorted efficiently. This kind of company culture is not about “just fun” or “let everyone do what they want”, but rather getting stuff done (and the money in).

And as you say, audio can be a busy segment. Thus, would one really think about wanting to wear some other hats, if there’s enough to do in just audio? One may not realize how difficult and busy it becomes to be excelling in multiple disciplines simultaneously, although there are people that can do that. If there’s another discipline to delve into, I would suggest programming, because it supplements one’s understanding of game audio as well as game development at the technical level.

“Thus, would one really think about wanting to wear some other hats, if there’s enough to do in just audio?”

I think it would have to be a case-by-case thing. I can see it going both ways. Like, on one hand, I really do believe that there is an infinite amount of audio work to be done in any phase of development. It’s limited only by my imagination and will. On the other hand, totally agree with you that learning programming is of amazing value. The more I think about it, the more I’d say that learning to code may not really be putting on a new hat. It’s more like putting a propeller on the top of the audio hat. I think the same could be said about learning more about design, or art, or anything else that ultimately makes us better audio designers.

But yeah, it often does come down to the bottom line, which can result in hiring highly specialized people, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I would say, though, that I’ve had the chance to grow in different directions here at Volition and it has been really gratifying, and I think it is ultimately to the benefit of the project, even if it takes some of my focus away from exactly-and-only-audio, if you know what I mean.

Really thankful for your participation in this topic, Internet Human. Thought provoking stuff. I respect the fact that you want to be anonymous, but contact me directly if you’d be interested in writing an article for the site. You seem to have a lot to say.

“If the only thing that an audio designer can contribute is post production sound design, if they have no other value to offer aside from that, if they are truly so bereft of life experience that they cannot contribute meaningfully during all phases of the project, then they had better lay low and hope nobody notices.”

It may not be “the only thing”, but it’s what one is most responsible for. Therefore it’s the most important area to sort out and everything extra follows. Game companies are structured in different disciplines, because the way most companies work is not about non-controlled or argumentative cross-discipline work (e.g. where everyone can be the game designer), but rather having groups that interconnect and intercommunicate. It’s like a ecosystem where each group or department has other departments that have certain duties and needs and that can provide certain resources. The work is then just about managing one’s own duties and knowing who or which group to connect with when one engages in cross-discipline communication and passes stuff from group to group.

The reason why audio is in post production is because it tends to be followed be graphics and code. Or are you suggesting that there are efficient ways to incorporate audio work to a creative project before the graphics and animation have been drawn and defined and there’s code support to playback the audio in-game? That’s a way to think about it, but I would like to know, what exactly can audio do in “pre-post-production” that’s purposeful and effective?

Also, I meant to say “The reason why audio is in post production is because it tends to follow graphics and code.”, obviously not “The reason why audio is in post production is because it tends to be followed by graphics and code.”.

Such good questions. I do believe that there is meaningful work that audio can do before the art has been drawn and before there is code support to play audio back in the game.
here is the obvious stuff like building relationships with key people on the project, getting involved with the design team and putting some strategies into place for how audio is going to work on the project. Planning, getting organized, brainstorming, stuff like that. It doesn’t result in assets necessarily, but I personally put a ton of value on that type of work.

There is also field recording, spending some time putting together synth patches and experimenting with sounds that might be applicable to the project, researching new hardware and software, which is all work that could result in some assets that could be helpful for exploring and defining the audio tone of the game. Again, not something that you’re going to be able to hear in-game if the audio engine isn’t working, but still relevant work that the audio team as well as other disciplines could find inspiring and helpful in honing in on what the game is about.

And there’s always practical work that can get jumped on by making certain assumptions. Probably not the best examples, but if you know you have humans, then you know you’ll need footsteps, cloth, etc. If you know you’ll have vehicle, then you know you’ll need tire noise, engines, horns, door slams, etc. If you know your location, you can start creating ambient audio for that location. The audio team can get a jump on these things. I don’t know that this would be the best way to spend time during the early phases. It depends on the needs of the project, the deadlines, etc. But technically, some production work can start even during the early phases if anything is known about the project.

Just a few examples, really depends on the project, but like I’ve said in another response, I think any audio designer could probably write up a giant list of stuff-to-do during any phase of the project. I think the problem is often that audio designers are more used to being handed stuff-to-do (production/post mindset) instead of creating it on their own, and there is a fear of wasted work, etc…